Race-based bill moving through legislature despite legal worries
The teacher scholarship bill relies on the same explicitly racial definition of "diverse" that resulted in a lawsuit, dismantling of another teacher program and amendments to other bills this session.

The Oregon House of Representatives is plowing ahead with a bill to spend $10 million on a scholarship program for black, Hispanic and Native American teachers even as the body has stripped identical explicitly racial criteria from other education bills considered this legislative session.
House Bill 3200 would spend $10 million from the state’s corporate activities tax on an existing scholarship program “for culturally and linguistically diverse teacher candidates.” That program exists “for the purpose of advancing the goal” that in each school district the percentage of educators of “black racial groups of Africa,” Hispanic, Asian, Native American descent and non-native English speaking educators reflects the percentage of students from those groups.
The bill received a hearing in the House Education and Workforce February 12. A committee vote on the bill is scheduled for April 7. An amendment to the bill is under consideration that would shift the source of funding to a different education-oriented state account, but would leave the explicitly racial criteria in place.
As exclusively reported by Oregon Roundup, the Education Committee is considering an amendment to strip identical “culturally and linguistically diverse” language from another education bill, HB 3030, “to operate the [bill’s school administrator grant] program in a manner that is aligned with federal law and respects concerns that have been raised relative to equal protection and the use of eligibility requirements that can be based on race,” according to testimony from the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Committee (HECC).
The Oregon Department of Education (ODE), not HECC, administers the teacher scholarship program HB 3200 would fund. When I asked ODE spokesman Marc Siegel whether the department shares HECC’s concerns about the constitutionality of explicitly racial criteria in Oregon law referenced by bills making their way through this legislative session, Siegel provided the following statement on behalf of ODE, here provided in its entirety:
The Oregon Department of Education is a nonpartisan agency that provides information, such as implementation information or education system data, as requested by the Legislature. Constitutional concerns are typically the purview of Legislative Counsel or the Department of Justice.
While the Department has no position on HB 3200, it is important to recognize the increasing diversity of our student population, which is currently more diverse than the adult population in Oregon. There is a body of research that has shown that when a student of color has a teacher of color at some point in their educational journey, it significantly boosts their academic progress.
Over 40% of Oregon’s students are students of color.
The two bills raise similar constitutional concerns because, in their current forms, they would both direct funding to administrators, in the case of HB 3030, or to teachers, as in the case of HB 3200, based upon the recipient’s membership in a group existing Oregon law deems “diverse.”
The statute that defines “diverse” is ORS 342.433(1), a longstanding law the legislature has indirectly referenced in recent legislation, including HB 3030 and HB 3200, in an attempt to target state benefits to members of specific racial groups. The pending amendment to HB 3030 would break the linkage of grant recipients to the definition of “diverse.” No such amendment is pending for HB 3200.
“Unbelievably, discrimination is baked into Oregon law, particularly the education statutes. These laws are unfair, unjust, and unconstitutional,” Rep. Ed Diehl (R-Stayton) wrote in an email to Oregon Roundup. Diehl has asked the legislative counsel’s office to provide an opinion as to the constitutionality of HB 3200 and other bills containing explicitly racial criteria pending this session.
The constitutional underpinnings of explicitly racial programs has eroded quickly in recent years.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard University, wrote that a college runs afoul of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause when its admission policies confer benefits to some applicants based on the race of those applicants. It is widely expected the holding in Students for Fair Admissions will be applied by federal courts to other contexts in which states confer benefits in part on the basis of a person’s race or ethnicity.
President Trump has said his administration will withhold federal funding to states that persist in unconstitutional diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
As reported by Oregon Roundup last year, the State of Oregon in 2021 adopted a “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan: A Roadmap to Racial Equity and Belonging.” The Action Plan calls on all state employees to seek to achieve in their official duties racially equitable outcomes, defined as “the redistribution of resources, power, and opportunity to . . . communities . . . impacted by systemic oppression.”
The 2021 DEI plan remains on the state’s website, instructing all state employees to redistribute resources and opportunity from Oregonian to Oregonian based upon their race.
Rep. Dwayne Yunker (R-Grants Pass), a member of the Education Committee, wrote Oregon Roundup,
I’ve been sounding the alarm on race-based scholarship programs since day one. HB 3200 is just the latest unconstitutional bill that picks winners and losers based on skin color. I opposed HB 3030 and HB 3006 [which uses the term “members of a marginalized population] for the same reason—and legal experts backed me up. The state had to shut down a similar program after being sued, and now here we are again, doubling down on discrimination instead of fixing our schools.
Last year, another Oregon agency, the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, was forced to dismantle a teacher license renewal fee assistance program targeted at “diverse,” as defined in the same statute relied upon by HB 3200, candidates after Medford, Oregon teacher Tyler Lynn sued on federal constitutional equal protection grounds.
HB 3200’s sponsor, Rep. Hoa Nguyen (D-Portland), did not respond to a request for comment on her bill.
Update 12:10 pm, April 3: A reader informs me that Rep. Nguyen is suffering from stage 4 cancer and undergoing treatment, as reported by Oregon Capital Chronicle in February.
It’s truly shocking that our leaders believe they are above the law. At this point let these fools continue and lose all their federal funding. 50th in education rankings is still attainable
Call it what it is – racism. Our OR legislature is predominantly white people filled with white guilt, with a smattering of other ethnic groups who also hold a racist grudge against white people. Rep. Hoa Nguyen (Vietnamese lineage) is happy to stick another knife in the back of white students on behalf of woke ideology. This bill makes it clear the Oregon Legislature intends to promote racist policies but changed the earlier bills only under threat of Trump's DOE withholding federal funds. So they're going to continue to screw white people but use Oregon taxpayers to fund their racial hatred.
The only way to fix Oregon's contemporary anti-white racism is to fire our elected politicians.
Unfortunately, many wealthy white voters also support prioritizing dark skinned people above Caucasian Oregonians because they feel guilty about their wealth. White skinned people who inherited money from their parents or grandparents are taught they have race advantages. Instead of giving away their inheritance or their expensive homes or their cushy, high paying jobs, they want poor and working class people to pay the reparations bill. In this case, we pay, our children and grandchildren get screwed out of opportunities.
Fight, fight, fight → Sue, sue, sue!